The battle between web hosting provider WP Engine and WordPress owner Automattic has entered a new phase now that the former has filed a lawsuit against Automattic’s CEO and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The latter is accused of extortion and abuse of power.
The suit follows the public disclosure of a draft license agreement in which Automattic proposed that WP Engine fork over a large monthly fee for the use of WordPress assets.
WP Engine’s lawsuit follows nearly two weeks of public wrangling between the two companies. WP Engine believes Automattic is not living up to its promise to manage WordPress as an open-source project and accuses Mullenweg of abusing its control of WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation for personal gain.
Threat to WP Engine’s business model
WP Engine mainly provides optimized hosting services for WordPress users, using (free) software and assets linked to WordPress. These fall under the GPL-v2 license. If that is no longer possible or becomes much more expensive, it would seriously threaten WP Engine’s business model. Automattic provides commercial hosting services through WordPress.com, effectively competing with WP Engine.
Now, it appears that there is a proposal from Automattic to WP Engine for a licensing agreement. That would involve WP Engine transferring eight percent of its gross revenue to Automattic each month for a period of seven years. This would be a royalty of sorts for using all the software and assets that both companies use. The agreement would also prohibit WP Engine from forking software such as plugins ‘in a manner that disrupts any partnership between Automattic and its commercial partners’.
A ‘substandard product’
Automattic believes that WP Engine provides an underwhelming product that tarnishes the project’s good name. Mullenweg called WP Engine the ‘cancer of WordPress’ and felt that it was precisely WP Engine’s private equity partner, Silver Lake, that was ‘neglecting’ the open source community.
WP Engine responded with a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Mullenweg retract his comments (such a letter is the legal way of saying ‘stop it’). Automattic responded with a counterclaim, enjoining WP Engine from violating Automattic trademarks (because of the alleged substandard services provided).
WP Engine cut off from sources
This fight eventually led Mullenweg to deny WP Engine access to all WordPress.org resources, including plug-ins and themes. This made it impossible for WP Engine customers to update their websites. After two days, this restriction was temporarily lifted. WP Engine was given until October 1 to find an alternative solution for software updates. It is not entirely clear what the status is now, but at least WP Engine has set up an alternative update server.
What is confusing in this situation is that Matt Mullenweg is the director of the (nonprofit) WordPress Foundation, which manages WordPress as an open-source project. However, he also owns the profit-driven company Automattic, which markets managed-hosting provider WordPress.com and e-commerce platform Woocommerce, among other things. Mullenweg also personally owns wordpress.org for self-hosted sites.
Also read: WordPress temporarily lifts ban on WP Engine
